This invention relates to an animal husbandry containment apparatus for containing and raising animals for market and to a method of raising animals.
The present apparatus is particularly designed for containing and raising pigs but can be modified in manner which will be known to one skilled in the art to make the system suitable for raising other animals including poultry.
It is well known that animals require, in the intensive farming situation which today's economics demand, an enclosure in which the animals are contained and housed with supply systems for supplying feed and water, extraction systems for extracting the manure and ventilation systems for communicating fresh air to maintain the temperature stable. As farming becomes increasingly important, the buildings and the farms are becoming also larger. Also there is an increasing specialization in animal husbandry so that animals are moved form one farm or location to another for the different stages of their life from birth to market. Disease is a significant problem in any such operation since the communication to a herd of a new disease by a recently arrived animal can cause destruction of the whole herd or at least significant losses in treating the disease.
One proposal for separate compartments for containing the animals which are collated together into a system is set out in a magazine article in "The Furrow" dated April 1981, which proposes a system known as "pig train" in which there is provided a series of compartments with the pigs spending about thirty days in each compartment and then moving from each compartment to the next. It is stated that the compartments are prefabricated and need only to be hoisted onto two concrete strips and connected to the heat, water and power supply.
However there remains a necessity for improvement in apparatus and methods for animal husbandry in view of these significant developments in the industry.